Saturday, November 10, 2012

Dovetail Plane

Hi Folks
Things are busy here at the Philly Workshop - plenty of lovely planes have been winging their way out the doors. Here's a rather special plane for making sliding dovetails. It cuts the male portion of the joint - it has an adjustable fence to set the depth (width?) of the tail and a depth stop to stop the plane cutting once the profile is complete. The plane features a reverse skewed iron (a regular skew like on a Fillister leaves a ragged edge on the fine corner of the dovetail - I found a reverse skew leaves it perfectly finished) and a nicker iron to cut a clean shoulder line.
The plane is simple to use (you just need to keep it upright as you plane) and, as it is designed to work across the grain, leaves lovely curly shavings. Cut one side of the joint, flip the workpiece over and repeat on the second side, giving a perfect dovetail!.

I've been using Facebook a lot more regularly than the Blog - if you use Facebook do head over to the Philly Planes page. I put up lots of pictures of day to day things on the bench!.